So, now you are working from home . . . At Westmeath, we’ve been working remotely long before it was fashionable! Assuming we survive the curse of COVID-19, this year we will celebrate our 10th anniversary as a virtual business communications consulting firm. By definition, members of the Westmeath Netsortium are facile with technology and fluent with both the latest tools and those that have stood the test of time.
As our clients and friends migrate from their corner offices or open workspaces to their kitchen tables or family rooms, we’re sharing a few of our go-to best practices. In addition to the obvious apps like Zoom and Google Hangouts, here are five Westmeath favorites.
1. SLACK. Teamwork is the name of the game. Slack is easy to set up and great for team projects and real-time updates. It also reduces the logjam of emails. The price is right (free) for small teams and reasonable for larger teams.
2. SHAREFILE. Working with publicly held corporations, it’s essential to share and store confidential documents securely. Since our early days, we embraced Citrix ShareFile. It offers a massive amount of cloud storage; it’s simple to navigate; and it’s accessible from your device of choice.
3. CISION. Keeping up with the news cycle is a must in our profession. Cision’s latest upgrade has a user-friendly interface and goes beyond media monitoring to offer influencer engagement, insights and analytics in real time. While Google Alerts are great, sometimes it’s worth having a paid subscription to detect early warning issues and the ability to dig into deeper analytics.
4. WHATSAPP. A regular part of our day is communicating with our friends and colleagues across Europe, EMEA or APAC. WhatsApp makes our conversations and correspondences instantaneous and free of charge.
5. IN CASE OF CRISIS. RockDove Solutions launched this leading crisis- management app at the 2012 London Olympics. Most organizations have dusted off their crisis playbooks with the recent turn of events —how are those 3-ring binders holding up? We’re living and working through a legitimate pandemic. Perhaps now’s the time to refresh your plan and go digital.
BONUS: BOARD GAMES. Finally, there’s a new twist to the work-from-home environment — even for virtual veterans. Creating time and space for work, many homebound executives are now ‘co-officing’ with ‘displaced’ pre-schoolers or elementary school children whose lives have also been disrupted by the coronavirus. Time to use your Boardroom skills to entertain these future leaders with board games such as Monopoly, Clue or Candyland. Dust off a deck of cards and teach your fellow detainees how to play Hearts, Crazy 8’s, Uno, Old Maid and, Solitaire! That should keep the kids occupied while you finish some important Boardroom tasks!
How have you found this transition to your home office?
· Piece of cake—I was already working virtually.
· I can’t stand it—I need an office, a commute and my peeps!
· It’s complicated —check back later.
[#slackhq #whatsapp #cisionglobal #citrixsharefile]
